How to Steal an Election - Economist.

... The presidential election in particular, scheduled to take place later this week, was supposed to herald a new chapter in Nigeria’s democratic advance. Olusegun Obasanjo is supposed to hand power over to his elected successor, the first such transition since independence in 1960. That may still happen, but at a dreadful price. The lengths to which Mr Obasanjo’s ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has gone to cling to power has discredited so many of Nigeria’s institutions and office-holders that the country now seems more a prisoner of its bleak past than a beacon for the future.

So blatant was vote-rigging and fraud in the 36 state elections last weekend that, on Tuesday April 17th, all the opposition parties demanded that those elections be voided and the presidential poll be postponed. On Wednesday the government rejected the call.
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Things were particularly bad in the oil-rich Delta region, where patently false 95% turn-outs were being recorded in some areas. Voters were routinely intimidated by gunmen who also stole ballot-boxes in front of journalists. An observer from Human Rights Watch, a pressure-group, described the vote-rigging as “shameless”. Privately, EU observers said that in half-a-dozen states there was no real election. Some 50 people are said to have died in violence and protesters burned down several election commission offices ...